SOURCE: "An Elegy for the Lost World of Espionage," in New Statesman, Vol. 126, No. 4334, May 16, 1997, p. 46.

In the following review, Emck lauds Banville's The Untouchable saying, "Banville's achievement is to show the tragic consequences of Maskell's detachment while making him an appealingly human, even noble, figure."

Victor Maskell, anti-hero of John Banville's The Untouchable, is based on Anthony Blunt, the Fourth Man: he is curator of the Queen's art collection, a spy of culture and owner of a painting by Poussin. This portrait of Seneca's "fortitude and dignity" when forced to commit suicide for conspiracy is symbolic of Maskell's own fate. On the one hand, the painting suggests the traitor is a man of noble resolve. On the other, it suggests he is just an aesthete, a collector of objets d'art without a heart.

John Banville embellishes brilliantly on the facts of Blunt's life in this poignant meditation...